


Fill it up with something

by glovered



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hypothermia, M/M, snow monster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-20
Updated: 2011-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glovered/pseuds/glovered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hypothermia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fill it up with something

**Author's Note:**

> written for [](http://laurificus.livejournal.com/profile)[**laurificus**](http://laurificus.livejournal.com/) ' prompt in [](http://silverbullets.livejournal.com/profile)[**silverbullets**](http://silverbullets.livejournal.com/).  
>  WARNINGS: If you are to be out in frigid temperatures for an extended period of time, dress in several layers of clothing. Improper dress is the leading cause of hypothermia. Always wear a hat.

"Again?"

"Oh for chrissakes."

About ten women started screaming shrilly.

"Shh, just, quiet down." Sam waved a giant arm behind him. The screams subsided into whimpers. He tried to listen, staring at the snow flurries building up against the thin windows. Dean smiled apologetically at the group, nodding at a truck driver who was huddled in a corner by the rack of corn nuts, biting on the brim of his hat.

"It'll be alright, folks," he told them. "Just your common abominable snow man."

On cue, wind howled from outside the gas station building. Shutters smacked against the window panes and close, too close, came a hollow roar.

"Kansas looking good right about now," Dean said. "What do you think, Dorothy?"

Sam didn't even frown, just glanced back at him, clenching his jaw like he was about to do something stupid. Dean saw it seconds before it happened, didn't have time to grab him by the back of the jacket, though, before Sam yanked open the door of the station and strode into the blizzard.

"Sam!" But he was gone. Dean turned, pointing at everyone. "Stay here. Lock the door behind me."

Then he ran out, into the night.

Dean would find Sam; he always did, it was just a question of when.

He jogged as fast as he could, at a slow trudge all over the immediate environs, shouting uselessly and wielding only a flashlight that flickered on and off, illuminating little. Snow slanted up against gas pumps, covering cars. There was a penumbra of weak light over every pump, but that was it, after which the world just dropped away into darkness and pines.

Stupidest thing you could do, go out in the middle of the night, in winter. After this, Dean swore to himself, after this he was going to invest in an array of bungees and attach Sam to him by the belt loops, and it was going to be beaches for at least a year, from then on.

He skirted the edge of the forest, falling into snowdrifts, coming out along the dark highway. The gas station dwindled like an island of faint light back behind him.

Around minute twenty-seven, he tackled a tree that he misidentified as Sam. The knock of chin to solid bark brought him back to himself. They hadn't slept for at least an eternity, he was icy everywhere, couldn't see, feet wet in his boots and brother lost to a snow monster that they hadn't even known existed. He was maybe a little exhausted due to tracking the first one of these things all that day through the forest.

He'd been yelling at intervals for half an hour, but now he just took a moment, removed himself from the tree and slowed to a walk under the sky. It was clearer out here, the winds had dropped a little. Ten inches of freshly fallen snow crunched underboot.

Then he heard it like a puff of air—his name—quietly in the inky distance.

"Sam?" His voice came out on a croak. He stopped where he was, swayed near another trunk.

He heard it again, over the weather.

Clearing his throat, he tried to answer louder. "Sam!"

A figure came loping down the road, faint in the non-light and buffeted by small sprays of snow flurry.

"Dean?"

"Sam!"

He didn't even try to run towards him, just stood there on the side of the road, ankle deep and soft-kneed with relief. He hadn't let himself doubt, but now that Sam was within his purview....

"Sam," he said when Sam finally entered the low beam. He swayed again, clutched at a low branch. "Why? Why would you bring that back with you?"

"C'mon, let's find shelter." He fisted a hand in Dean's soaked jacket and hauled him off.

Retracing their footsteps, they passed a big rig which Sam said they should break into because it would be damn near impossible to make it back to the others, to dig out the door which was doubtlessly covered. Everyone in there would be fine, he said, they had food and water and—

" _Beer_ ," Dean croaked. Sam maneuvered him against the rig, putting the severed head on a drift as well while he jiggered the passenger side lock despite fingers which were probably blue and frozen. He was a dark shape, Dean wanted to shine the flashlight on him, see him, but he'd put it down somewhere.

"This is Michigan, I don't think they sell alcohol at convenience stores," Sam said conversationally. His teeth were clacking, though, and that was never a good sign. Dean reflected on this, how Sam had always been hotter than him and those were the facts. Sam like a freaking furnace while Dean shivered prettily when they were stuck in extreme weather.

The lock clicked.

Dean had never been _that_ squeamish, but he felt it was well within reason to ask Sam to leave the head outside. He put forth his argument:

"Don wan it in the truck."

Sam stepped over to him, pressed a hand against the side of his face, patted him on the cheek. "Stay with me, Dean."

It's just, the eyes on that thing were bloodshot. The fangs were massive, fake-looking in the flashlight beam where it lay in the snow. That thing could have killed his brother, and Dean wouldn't have even been there. Then history would have repeated, he would have been just like dad, living his life to avenge his one, his only. Except for, how embarrassing! Grudge against a snow monster! What would the other hunters think—?

There was blood soaked into the snow, and all over Sam's shirt. Dean's lungs hurt, burned.

Sam grabbed Dean under one arm, then, in the darkness, and pulled him away, up into the truck.

Dean had no clue where he was. It smelled like Sam's b.o. and cigarettes, and the space was bright white. It took a second of blinking tiredly, and then he saw that the white was snow sprayed across car windows, light floating into this makeshift igloo of glass and crystals. Dean was sweating in a fraught, chilly sort of way, body pressed into a leather seat that was not the bench of the Impala, because the floor mats were black with red fire, covered in sunflower seed shells, and baby don't roll like that.

He groaned, pushing back into Sam who was, yes, spooning him, a hand splayed on Dean's abs and their ankles hooked together, off the seat by the passenger door. So, they were both alive, that was a point.

Sam stretched languidly behind him, edging that hand down a bit, pinky disappearing below the waistband of Dean's boxers. Dean would have protested but his head hurt more than it should ever, and there was so much else wrong that this one soft touch wasn't something he could argue against.

He reached out to turn the key in the ignition an inch so the heat whooshed on in a cold puff. He turned on the windshield wipers, clearing snow to reveal blue sky. Sam shifted around some more, but released him so that Dean could lift high enough to look out over the dash. The world was white forever, trees dark against the drifts, but the scene looked hopeful, like a Christmas card rather than a post-apocalyptic dawn; Dean knew, because he had seen both.

He lowered himself again, and Sam snugged against his back, sighing, taking up basically the entire seat. He nosed the nape of Dean's neck.

"Morning," Dean said. His voice came out scratchy. He'd been yelling last night, he remembered now. "Dude, you fucking shanked Big Foot."

"Breaking the hearts of many," Sam mumbled into Dean's hair. "Although it wasn't Big Foot. Doesn't exist, remember? Also, don't ever do that again."

"Excuse me?" Dean tried to turn, struggle away or sit, but Sam wrapped his bulging arm tighter like a vice. Dean injected his voice with more censure. "Who was it who ran off into the middle of the North Pole with only a machete, against an eight-foot-high monster?"

"That's not so tall."

"Sam, I'm serious here." He was waking up more now, head pounding like he was alive. Also, he was shirtless, his jacket was thrown over the both of them like a blanket.

"You were purple, Dean, and you were stumbling. When I found you, you were trying to climb a tree, don't even ask me why."

"I was coming to get you!" Dean said. "After you just took off!"

"Dean, yesterday you wrestled with the bigger version of last night's. It threw you into a boulder, and all we've eaten in as long as I can remember is beef jerky and whiskey which frankly—" And here Sam's voice rose as he tensed with auditory and physical outrage, "— _frankly_ tasted like piss. After I lugged you in here, I had to strip you down to your underwear and spoon you for three hours with the heater on, you babbling things I frankly didn't need to hear in those circumstances, until you warmed up enough that I was sure you weren't going to die while I was asleep."

"You didn't have to sleep for a year an a half. A few more hours won't kill you, you big baby."

Sam huffed out in annoyance. Dean wriggled around, as if to say, _got you on that one_ or something else, something smug. He loved getting Sam all worked up. And they had survived, yet again, this was the morning-after celebration. They would get up soon, put on their now-crusty clothing and make it to some diner. Wrapped around his coffee mug, Sam's fingers would have flecks of blood under the nails from when he'd saved the town nine hours before, and Dean would eat about twenty pancakes.

Thoughts of food were about to spur a whole other fantasy, but just then Sam sighed and tightened his arm around Dean's waist for the most fractional of seconds, derailing Dean's thoughts.

"Anyway," he said. "Don't ever make me rub feeling back into your limbs again. It's degrading for both of us."

"Oh, right," Dean breathed. "Because we're so classy right now. Half-dead and stuck in some hick's beef-hauler."

He felt warmth at the nape of his neck, Sam opening his mouth against it. He pressed subtly back, and Sam used teeth.

"So," he had to clear his throat twice to get it out. "What did I, uh, what did I say last night?"

"You were probably just delirious."

Dean moaned quietly as Sam pressed the flat of his tongue where he'd scraped his teeth across.

"Nuh-uh," he said, rubbing back, couldn't help it. "I mean, I don't remember, but I am nothing if not cohere—"

Sam hummed against his neck, and ran a sure hand up over Dean's chest. They were two grown guys, shoved onto a bench seat after another brush with death, Dean told himself. This was bound to happen, didn't mean—

His rationalization stopped there, though, on an aborted breath from one or both of them. Sam pulled him back against him by the hip, rutting in a kind of pathetic attempt that had Dean's headache dwindling off in seconds.

Birds chirped. An honest-to-God snowplow chose that moment to chug slowly by at a foot away, clearing the roads of last night's mayhem. Sam kissed the back of Dean's ear, not even pretending any longer, hard up behind him.

"I took out the abominable snow man," he said. "So you wouldn't have to sit trapped in a gas station on your birthday."

Dean wanted to laugh, he was probably still in shock. He said: "Sam Winchester, my hero."

He tried for sarcastic, but missed it by a mile because someone chose that moment to stick a hand down his boxers.

  
_fin_   



End file.
